Welcome to the class blog of Ben Villarreal's Freshman English 12 Course: Visual and Verbal Literacies! Here you'll find the thoughts, ideas, and burgeoning written work from our class about the multiple literacies we experience.

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05 March 2012

Sean
Sanchez

Superwho ?

In
chapter 4 of the myth of superman by Umberto Eco he explains that superman has a
huge variety of superpower from unlimited strength, flying, x-ray vision, and
super hearing. Superman is able to relate to normal people because he plays the
role of a journalist who is despised by a coworker.

Eco
argues that there is a “fundamental difference in superman and traditional
heroic figure of mythology and religions”. With traditional religions, the character
followed a unchangeable destiny. This story shaped how the public saw the
character in the story. He compares these ideas to Hercules, Roland, gothic
cathedrals’, and renaissance churches. We already knew the story behind them.
The mythological character superman is in the same position.

Aristotle
explains that a plot in a story must have a character involved in a number of
events, reversal, recognitions, and terrifying cases that end in catastrophe. The problem with superman is that this does
not happen. He has no adversary or weakness besides kryptonite but he allows
finds a way around it. This makes the superman stories short.

Eco
argues that superman cannot be immortal because that would make him a god and
that would hurt his double identity. Superman then is inconsumable and
consumed. He is a myth without regards to time, but is allowed because his role
as man in everyday life. Superman is able to do this because he does not start
off from the point he left. He jumps right into a new story every time.

The
writers of superman can then take the characters stories and retell them.For example super boy, super girl, super
baby, are told and are similar to superman. Also it is important in superman to
have a story that involves love. Robert Giammanco then talks about the sexual
nature of character like superman and batman.

Superman
can relate to problems of causalities, temporality, and irreversibility of
events.The writers of superman did not
intend this though. Superman gives us a way of telling stories that govern how
societies should work.

Superman
is the best know and most talked about hero argues Eco.He argues that all other heroes from comics
are gifted just like superman and are kind and honest. These stories show the
triumph of good the downfall of evil. Superman though is only limited to his
hometowns. He never protects the rest of the world.Eco then discuss how superman uses all his
energy to protect and do good deed when he could be using his powers for
something different.

In Up, Up, and Oy
Vey, Superman is compared to people from the bible. These
people all did good moral deeds. This compares to eco’s ideas because eco
discusses how superman was the perfect hero. He never used his powers to
destroy the world. Also eco’s talks about how superman only is limited to protecting
his home towns. This is what the people of the bible did. They were only
limited to certain areas.